Dear Riley,
I just finished “Children of Time”, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s a science fiction novel which takes place thousands of years in the future. I’ve read a lot of “space opera” sci-fi lately ,but this particular book has a very unique premise. Humanity has terraformed a distant planet, with the goal of seeding it with intelligent life. To do this, they plan to send tens of thousands of monkeys to the planet, along with a “nano-virus”, used to speed up the evolutionary process. Instead of taking millions of years, it will take only a few thousand generations for these monkeys to evolve into intelligent life. The humans will then return to this planet in some distant future to rule over their monkey subjects.
***Slight Spoiler Alert***
Unfortunately, something goes wrong, and the monkey barrel burns up in the process of entering the atmosphere, preventing the monkeys from ever making it. The nano-virus however, makes it to the planet, and accidentally targets a different species for evolution. We learn this in the second chapter, as it’s told from the early spider’s point of view.
At the same time, war breaks out on earth, sending mankind to near extinction. A last hope arc ship leaves a devastated earth, with the last 500 thousand humans in existence. These remainder of our species are asleep in hibernation chambers, as the arc ship sets out across the galaxy to find a new home.
The story is told from a first person view, with each chapter alternating between a human protagonist aboard the ship, and a spider protagonist on the terraformed planet. Thousands of years pass by, with the humans slipping in and out of hibernation, aging only for as long as they are awake. The story of the spiders however, span generations. A new generation of spiders (same name and point of view), is used each chapter. Each chapter portraying new details of their evolutionary progress on the green planet.
In contrast to the evolving spiders, the humans aboard the arc ship seem to be devolving. The author creates internal tension within each storyline, and sets the two on a collision course. The arc ship is falling apart, can no longer sustain life, and the humans are in desperate need to land on the green planet.
In space, distance is no longer expressed in distance, but in time. I’ve never read a book that plays out over the course of millennia. The title really suits the book. There were some points in the story line that slightly dragged on, but the novelty of the concept, along with the writing, held my attention.
In the final 3 chapters, the evolutionary contrast between humans and spiders comes into play. The humans use the philosophical context of the “prisoners dilemma” to describe their conflict as a zero sum game. Whereas the spiders take on a collaborative approach, ultimately exhibiting a more sophisticated level of evolution.
Overall, it was a very satisfying read, albeit a bit slow at times. I read it on my Kindle, so it wasn’t until I finished that I realized the book was 600 pages!
Love,
Dad
6/3/2017
Written on a Saturday afternoon while you are napping. This morning we went to Grandma/Grandpa’s house. You were impersonating Grandpa and his magic tricks, by making your pasta tubes disappear. Everyone thought it was so funny!